"This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile," he said in an unscripted remark. Using the word "crusade" to describe American retaliation to September 11 was counter-productive in the extreme. It recalled one of the darkest chapters in Christian history, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims by marauding Christian "holy warriors" in repeated attempts to capture Jerusalem.[more]
Bush never used the word again but "crusades" has been a gift that keeps giving for Osama bin Laden and his followers who say they are waging war against "Jews and crusaders," a conflict they still hope to turn into a permanent clash of civilizations.
"Al Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues ... want to create a homogenous, undifferentiated Islam on whose behalf they speak and a coherent master narrative which justifies their action," Marc Lynch, who heads the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, wrote in a recent essay.
Conflating terrorism and Islam and thus creating a mental connection between the two, in other words, serves al Qaeda's cause.
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